Matt Yglesias hits the nail on the head:
“I’ve got some serious disagreements with Thomas Frank’s take on this whole phenomenon, but he’s very right to argue in his book and elsewhere that the politics of cultural populism depends crucially on the Republicans never delivering the goods on any of the really big issues. Meanwhile, social conservatives have gotten treated this way for years — decades, really — and while they always complain about it, they always show up when it’s time to vote. I would suggest that insofar as liberals sometimes condescend to these people (which we do) the issue is less a condescending attitude toward religion, than a condescending attitude toward a voting bloc that doesn’t seem capable of figuring out that it’s being scammed no matter how many times it happens”
I’m fine with people’s religion as long as they don’t force me to practice it. Live and let live, I say. I like freedom and that includes freedom of religion. My problem with these people is that they are fools to continually be taken in by a group of rich plutocrats who’ve been running things for quite some time now and who have never substantially delivered anything they’ve promised to the social conservatives. They put on a good show, with lots of razzle dazzle, but they are not sincere. The social conservatives are like greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. And the big money boyz are laughing all the way to the bank. Take pornography, for instance:
What companies are involved? Spencer’s investigators and reports from market research firms indicate that pornography is a $10 billion industry in the US alone, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The largest company is not even known for pornography, but for selling cars. General Motors Corp.’s DirecTV subsidiary sells nearly $200 million a year of pay-per-view sex films, according to industry estimates not disputed by GM.
Other companies involved, including EchoStar Communications, the No.2 satellite provider, AT&T Corp., by offering the HotNetwork service through its cable service, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment and News Corp., all have major stakes in pornography, but these stakes are not mentioned in annual reports, except in the vaguest ways. An AT&T executive explains, “How can we? It’s the crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she’s there, but you can’t say anything about it.”
Do the social conservatives know that George W. Bush himself served on the board of a Hollywood production company, run by his best friend Roland Betts? They weren’t making Bambi, they were making movies like The Hitcher, which featured a woman being ripped in two. He made quite a nice little profit from that work (1983 to 1994.) Yet he forgot to mention his connection to the decadent world of Hollywood when he said:
“There needs to be a kind of sense of urgency in our society about the pervasiveness of violence”
It’s hard to respect people who are willing dupes year after year and deliver power to a party that is merely using them for electoral gains and has absolutely no intention of delivering on its promises. There’s just too much money involved in selling the culture that these people find so objectionable. And the ones who are selling it own the Republican party lock stock and falafel.
Like I said. Schmucks.